Hundreds of students and faculty gathered in the psychology quad yesterday for the department’s annual Psych Day, where students could get information on a myriad of topics, such as possible careers and a future in graduate school.
“Psych Day is an opportunity for students to share what they’ve learned and to get rewards for what they’ve done,” Cal State Long Beach psychology professor Dave Whitney said. “It’s a chance for students to have fun and explore and also to learn about grad schools.”
Booths were set up all around the quad, each sporting a few black and yellow balloons. About a dozen grad schools had tables, including the USC School of Social Work and the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Outside organizations, like the Blind Children’s Learning Center and National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI) were also at the event.
“Psych Day in general promotes a lot of awareness because it’s a really broad subject, and a lot of times when people think of psychology, they think of just giving therapy,” NAMI representative and CSULB senior Lizett Rivas said. “For NAMI specifically, our mission is to educate and advocate on mental illness, so it’s kind of the same thing.”
In addition to the tables and booths, about 30 students had presentations and posters hanging on the walls of the west side of the quad. Each summarized a study or study proposal aimed at conducting further research in the field of psychology.
Amber Latronica, a grad student, gave a presentation on the effects of stress.
“I’m looking at the effects of ways people regulate their emotion as it relates to stress,” Latronica said. “There’s a theory that you regulate your emotions either by cognitively reassessing things or by just suppressing emotions. I want to see how those things interplay and how they affect stress level.”
Psychology students have studies like this to look forward to as they advance in the program. Psych Day provided those already doing studies with the chance to display their work and hear opinions that will ultimately improve their proposals.
“It’s really nice to get feedback from students and faculty and just get input,” Latronica said. “We can get feedback from people on what’s clear, what’s unclear – things we can do to just sharpen up prior to actually implementing the project.”
Psych Day started off with the grad school fair in the quad and continued with several workshops held in classrooms throughout the day. It ended with a speech by Joseph White, entitled, “The Influence of the Browning of America on Psychology in the 21st Century.
This was the Psychology Department’s 40th Annual Psych Day, and it was hosted by the Psychology Student Association and Psi Chi students.